If we do not understand the nature of man we cannot adequately comprehend the aim and meaning of God's process in leading us unto Himself; therefore is it a subject of the highest importance. For many there are who know and acknowledge that Christ can alone be their sufficiency before God, who, nevertheless, are by no means convinced of the practical and utter ruin of their nature.
The normal state of man, as first created, was that of innocence-he had done no unrighteousness; and this consisted in his doing God's will, and not his own; therefore, he was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for if he did, he would substitute his own will for God's. Satan, in his enmity to God, assails man, and beguiles the woman by representing the great benefits that would flow from the act i.e., from disobeying God and following his own will. Satan engendered in the woman the thought, that God would not do for her as well as she could do for herself, and Adam, listening to his wife, fell into the snare. What God had refused, the serpent assured them, would greatly serve them; and what God would not give, to that they could help themselves. Thus God was disbelieved and Satan listened to; and herein was sin instilled into man's nature, which thence underwent a change, not only in intelligence but in feeling. It was poisoned with an untrue idea of God, and imbued with self-dependence. It now trusted itself and its own powers more than God's, and implied in its line of action, that God would refuse what would benefit, though abundantly in His power to give! What a delusion! What an estrangement from happy trust in God and full obedience, delighting in the mercies of His hand, to be now so filled with distrust that not only is His word disbelieved, but He is accused of limiting man's blessing, who must therefore secure for himself what God has denied I What more painful feeling could be entertained towards a once esteemed benefactor, than that he has power to advance me but interdicts it, and that I can help myself to it in defiance of him I Satan gained his point, and instilled the poison into man's nature, which must henceforth rankle with distrust of God and self-dependence, which was only increased and helped on by an enlarged intelligence or power of judging between good and evil, though the standard of such intelligence must be a low one, for it must be with relation to man, and not with relation to God, of whom man had now no right idea.
What then, we may next inquire, was man's course in this fallen condition? Having been made upright he was not without some knowledge of God, though he had sought out and pursued his many inventions; he had conscience, too, which, while it had no power to debar him from his inventions, could always tell him that he was not up to the mark. No man, however hardened, could say that he had entirely answered to his conscience. He might not listen to it, but if he consulted it at all, he must allow that he could not do everything, even according to his own standard. But the more man's nature, thus poisoned, developed itself, the further it got from God; and not liking to retain God in his knowledge, God gave him over to a reprobate mind, and the result was, all the immorality of Paganism -an immorality which as we see in heathen mythology was sought to be excused by assigning a special divinity to each class of it, which profane doing evinced, that the conscience, degraded as it was, sought some relief from the evil by assuming that it was divinely sanctioned, and therefore all that system elucidates most clearly the religious corruption which fallen nature is in itself capable of; for we need to study nature as a whole in order to understand its tendencies and fruits.
The system of heathenism, showing what fallen nature following its corruptions will do in order to satisfy its conscience and at the same time follow its own will and lust, gives us a great clue to its spirit and will. It illustrates man trying to combine the lust of his corruption with conscience and to satisfy conscience, while acting according to his own will and lust; so that in the end it became too monstrous and absurd even for man's reprobate mind. Then a new system sprung up, a reformation which was introduced and promoted by men called philosophers, which system in principle proposed that man should attain to divine favor, not through any intervention of God or divine instrumentality, but by discipline of himself. This doctrine, supported by two opposite schools, became attractive to any one who felt the degradation into which mere Paganism had plunged him; and the more so as it was addressed to him as having in himself an inherent power to improve and advance himself, which to man, in any degree conscious of his demoralization, was the most pleasing and delusive idea. The spirit and aim of all this philosophy was that man by his own unaided efforts could attain to virtue, and that such attainment would be bliss. This being a mere human reformation, and having to encounter the licentious system of Paganism, could not stand its ground, and in the end had to succumb; so that we find at Athens (Acts 17) an altar, in addition to all other altars, inscribed " to the unknown God;" thus distinctly intimating that their knowledge had only reached this point-even to know their ignorance-to know that they knew nothing, and to verify the word of God that " the world by wisdom knew not God." Thus if in the system of Paganism we get one principle in man's nature, even the endeavor to combine the satisfaction of his natural conscience with his own will and lust, we find in that of philosophy another, equally leading and distinct, and no doubt allowed of God to be tested and developed to the utmost by the Greeks and their followers, even that man's effort to repair himself eventuates in the acknowledgment that his greatest attainment is only to disclose to him his ignorance of God.
Thus we have seen what man's nature is as left to-itself, in the development of its own mind and will; but there is another phase and circumstance in which we must consider it, even that as placed in the light of revelation from God. And what does that reveal? We have only to read the Old Testament in order to ascertain how man in his own nature responds to the revealed will of God.
Early enough Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord; the beginning of his kingdom was Babel. He would enjoy himself independently of God, just as the tower of Babel was conceived and erected in sheer independence of God.
Then, what a commentary on man's nature in the most favored circumstances is Israel's history: exhibiting to us the antagonism and enmity of its will toward God in so many varied and painful forms, that any one who knows anything of his own heart must be convicted and humbled by the resemblance to it which he reads in that history of weakness and sin. To Israel were committed the oracles of God, and yet they caused His name to be blasphemed among the Gentiles, and wandered into even greater excesses than the nations, and, as we learn by the parable of the vineyard, they increased in bitterness and opposition to God as times grew on-and were only the more aggravated in antagonism by the presence of the Son of God among them. In the gospel narrative man's nature is distinctly and painfully exposed, and finally condemned, too, as irretrievably incompetent in every respect, proved as such by its reception, converse with, and treatment of " God manifest in the flesh." It was found to be either so wicked and abandoned as to contemplate and contrive His death; or so weak, that in the most desired moment it cannot maintain the semblance of allegiance to Him-but so grossly the contrary, that it can deny Him. It is impossible for any one to read the history of man's reception of the Lord from heaven- He who, as born of a woman, was one of the human family on earth-and not be struck with the utter depravity of man as regarded God, though he had all the light of God's revelation to assist him. The secrets of many hearts were revealed by the manner and measure of the rejection which each leveled against the only one who ever appeared on earth in human perfection-the one Man who came up to the perfect standard of God's mind and will. The scribes and Pharisees, the chief priests, and all the teachers, while boasting of being the repositories of God's mind, were the loudest and fiercest in demanding the death of the Son of God! Where was the goodness of nature or the gain from revelation there 2 They instigated the multitude to cry out, " Crucify him, crucify him!" If nature had a single particle of true power, ought it not to have had some apprehension of the sacredness of the person of the Son of God on earth and the divinity of His mission, especially when educated and assisted by the revelation of God? Was it not tried then, and found-oh how sadly!-wanting?
What greater or better opportunity could it ever have again of expressing its ability to understand the ways and manner of God, than when God's only-begotten Son was in all the nearness and intimacy of flesh among men?
But if the teachers and guides under the law of God could be so led away by their natural mind, as not only to refuse and reject the Son of God, but to hate Him so much that nothing but His death would satisfy them: if, I repeat, the natural mind were proved so utterly insensible to the divine mind, and at issue with it, notwithstanding all the opportunities offered to it, how could anyone again assume, much less maintain, that there was power, or principle, or perceptiveness in it to desire or attain to what was divinely perfect? As the Lord said, " Now they have no cloak for their sin." He had "done among them the works which none other man did." The perfection of humanity often lauded, and by the Pharisees grossly imitated, was displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet the chosen people of God, educated in His law, disowned, rejected, and consigned Him to an ignominious death. He that cannot appreciate a superior proves himself an inferior. To what a depth of degradation, then, did man's nature sink in the crucifixion of Christ!
But this was not all. Not only do we find its irretrievable wickedness, as evinced in the Jews' treatment of Christ, but in His very disciples, in those who loved Him in the secret depths of their hearts, we find that the nature of man is so feeble and inconstant, that it cannot support and vindicate impressions and feelings of which it has been assured. Nay, in its pitiable weakness, it does violence to the approved sentiments of the soul. They all forsook Him in the hour of His distress, not from want of love or faith, but from the simple infirmity of a nature which could not support the good emotions working in it and approved of.
The beloved disciple slept when asked to watch; and Peter, who had hardihood enough to smite off the high priest's servant's ear, when unsupported, cursed and swore that he did not know his own loved Lord and Master.
Thus the gospel narrative details to us how man's nature has been subjected to the last trial, when, if it had a particle of goodness or power, it must have appeared; but instead of this, it exposed itself at EVERY point, both in wickedness and weakness.
I have thus endeavored briefly to set forth the history of man's nature, and how it has been proved, step by step, to be utterly profitless, and its enormity so sealed, that God's fiat-now pronounced by the Holy Ghost, who is at once the witness of man's sin and of God's righteousness-is, " the natural mind is at enmity against God:" and, "they that are in the flesh cannot please God."